Does active school travel improve mood and academic functioning? A within-person study among adolescents

Active school travel, walking or cycling to school, may contribute to daily physical activity, with well-established benefits for physical health. Active travel has also been associated with better mood and cognitive performance, but whether these associations reflect effects of active travel itself remains uncertain. Most existing studies rely on cross-sectional designs that cannot distinguish the effects of travel mode from pre-existing individual differences. We use a repeated-measures field design to examine whether adolescents’ mood and cognitive functioning differ across days when they travel actively versus passively to school. Students aged 13–16 from two Norwegian lower-secondary schools participated in up to four survey rounds over two weeks (468 students; 1,116 observations). Schools sent pre-specified messages encouraging active or passive travel, generating within-person variation in travel behaviour. Outcomes measured shortly after school-arrival included mood, self-reported performance, working memory, and executive functioning. Among students who changed travel mode in line with the instructions, active-travel days involved approximately 13–15 additional minutes of active transport. Despite this meaningful change in travel behaviour, we found no consistent improvement in mood, self-reported performance, working memory, or executive functioning on active-travel days. The findings were confirmed by a difference-in-difference approach comparing students who changed their travel mode in line with the instructions (compliers) with those who maintained their usual mode (non-compliers), to control for time-varying confounds common to both groups. The findings suggest that the immediate psychological benefits of active travel may be weaker, more context-dependent, or less universal than is often assumed.